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Saturday, August 01, 2009

Professional Painters Expert Paint Restoration of Historic House Near Chicago

The Argyllshire Estate

The Argyllshire Estate is located in Lake Forest, IL, a suburb of Chicago situated on the bluffs over Lake Michigan that is known for it's magnificent homes. Modeled after a manor in England, the estate has an intricate, curved wood shingle roof and exterior wood trim made from hand-hewn boards.

Lake Forest historians believe that the home was built around 1899. Although the architect is unknown, it is considered that much of the landscaping was originally planted by famed Bostonian, Warren Manning, between 1910 and 1930. Manning was employed by Fredrick Law Olmstead, the designer of Central Park in New York City. While under Olmsted's employ, Manning worked on prestigious projects such as the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and the Biltmore Estate of George Vanderbilt in Asheville, North Carolina.

The most noteworthy historical fact of the Argyllshire Estate is that it was built for Cyrus McCormick III, grandson of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the horse drawn reaper. Considered to be one of the most significant developments in agriculture history, the reaper made farming far more efficient and resulted in a global shift of labor from farmlands to cities. Cyrus McCormick III went on to be Chairman of the International Harvester Company.

The Estimate

Originally, the owners requested an estimate from Professional Painters to paint the stucco and wood trim on their home and garage. After close examination, I realized that the stucco had never been painted in its 108-year existence. If I recommended not painting the stucco, it would cost me $30,000.00 in lost business. However, when my firm is commissioned to restore these types of magnificent historic homes, my first obligation is do to what is right for the home. My instincts told me that if no one had painted this stucco in 108 years, I did not want to be the first to paint it. Once stucco is painted, it is very difficult to remove the paint without destroying the stucco.

By mere coincidence, soon after I prepared the estimate, I went on a vacation to Italy. While I was there, I saw many stucco structures over 400 years old which had never been painted, yet seemed to be holding up well. When I returned, I shared this information with my clients and we agreed to leave the stucco unpainted. Instead, I offered another option of sealing the stucco with a clear sealer, which could be done at a later time.

Restoration Procedure

Once the house was pressure washed and thoroughly dried, the crew began scraping the loose paint and immediately ran into a problem. This home has all hand-hewn boards which are difficult to scrape without damaging the wood. My foreman figured out that by using curved profile carbide scrapers, he would be able to effectively scrape in the nooks and crannies of the rough wood surface. Unfortunately though, they could only scrape in a downward motion. Scraping horizontally would have been more efficient, but would have damaged and gouged the wood.

There were many carpentry repair issues on this project. One of the first items was the 97 pieces of abandoned awning hardware that the client wanted removed from the home and the holes patched.

The other carpentry repairs were more complicated. The trim included many hand-carved wood pieces, but numerous small pieces of wood were missing. To properly repair them, the carpenter had to recreate the hand-hewn effect of the original wood surface. He had to hatchet off the face of stock cedar boards to get his repair pieces to blend in with the existing wood surface. This was difficult to do and slowed the process, but the repaired pieces blended in beautifully with the original pieces.

The Front Entrance and Front Door

The front entrance was left to the end of the project. While scraping the painted front floor and steps, my foreman discovered they were made of solid oak. I brought this to my client's attention and we decided to restore them to their natural beauty. The softer parts of the oak floor had been worn away from use over time, making the harder wood grain more prominent, which created a very unique and attractive look. However, the painters had to use small wire brushes to pick the paint out of the deep grain pockets. It was painstaking work, but the end result was well worth it

The focal point of the entrance is the front door. You could not replicate this door if you wanted to today. It was made from quarter sawn oak four inches thick and it has an arched top with three metal strap hinges across the front of it. It looks like a door to a medieval castle.

The door previously had a white pickled finish. After the stripping off the finish, we noticed stains that had left a cloud-like halo effect around the metal hinges. We were originally planning to varnish the door with no stain, but the high gloss varnish would have accentuated these halo effects. We decided instead to stain the door to get a more consistent color. Before we stained the door though, we used A.B.R's X-180 deck cleaner to lighten the halo effects, which worked quite well.

Now we had to face the dilemma of the three rusty metal hinges on the door. The issue was whether we would leave them natural or paint them black. After we cleaned them with sudsy ammonia, a more consistent color emerged. We then decided to varnish the hinges and, if they didn't look good, simply paint over them. The varnished hinges made the door look more authentic, like the historic artifact that it is. The client loved it!

Project Completion

The final result is stunning. The combination of generations of craftsmen-those who came before us to create this magnificent door, floor and steps, and the 60 hours of painstaking detail my expert craftsmen spent restoring it to its original beauty-is truly something to behold.